27 May 2004

Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 84

May 27, 2004

Weather: Sunny

Sunrise: 1: 44 a.m.

Sunset: 11: 40 p.m.

# of daylight hours: 21 hours 54 minutes

High Temp: 6°C 43°F

Low Temp: -6°C 21°F

Average Temp: 0°C 32°F

Precipitation: No

Form:

How Much:

Part of being on a science expedition involves waiting for the right conditions in order to do your experiment, making sure that when you are ready to do the experiment that you have all your equipment and procedures ready to go, and collaborating with others about what you are doing. Today we did a little bit of each of those.

We started the day, by going down to the boat in an effort to work on figuring out how we were going to get the winch hooked up. However, when we got there, we spoke with the captain of the boat, Mikhael, and he and his crew were busy getting ready to move the boats because the ice is going to be breaking in the next couple of days. So although we didn’t get on the boat we were able to find out some more information so that we will be better prepared for when the time comes to actually do our testing from the boat.

We also met with some of the “officials” from Zhigansk. It was a meeting to introduce ourselves and to try and let people know what we are doing here. The mayor, who we met with is also very interested in the Lena River, but his interests are a little more local in scope as opposed to our interests which are really global in scope. He is concerned about the water quality in the Lena and wanted to know if the testing that we are doing could provide information about the water quality, so Max and Sasha (scientist from Russia) will keep that in mind.

Today also involved just hanging around. That was fun though because that is how we had the opportunity to meet Agatha and walk around town a little bit. The town is really interesting. It is all dirt roads and mostly wooden buildings although there are some metal ones. There are no cars, but there are a couple of jeeps, and a few pieces of heavy machinery that are seen around town. Although I find it hard to believe, there are over 4000 people that live in the town. I would have never have guessed that because when you are walking down the street, you don’t see people walking around at all. Also, although there are a number of shops and stuff, they are sort of hidden, so it is hard to know that any of those types of shops exist. I also find myself wondering, “What do people do here?” and I haven’t quite figured that out yet, but they seem to be doing something, and they do seem happy to be here. I think part of what seems strange to me is that there is no where to go from here except by plane or boat—and the boats are frozen in for the majority of the year. Coming from a place where we all move around so much, this insular village seems very different to me.